About

Bio:

Bahram's practice revolves around the idea of ‘affirmative negation’ and deconstruction of the peripheral relationship between medium and message. He unpacks his installations and performances through presenting the impotent medium, such as texts that are incapable of conveying their intended message, destructed photos that are depleted from the iconic value of an image, and bodies that are unable to introduce the real identity of individuals. Within this destructive space lies an important and affirmative sentiment, which is the main objective in his relational practice: the possibility of relocating the meaning from the art object to the contingency of reception.

Bahram's work and research has been supported by grants and awards from the Tokyo Foundation for International Research, Ford Alumni Center, University of Oregon and Society for Photographic Education. Born in Iran, Bahram lives in Eugene, where he works as adjunct faculty at the University of Oregon since 2015.

Website Publications:

Bahram, who has visited Iran once in the past seven years, explores the complexity of social and political identity through his work, and in particular the effect of Iranian government surveillance and censorship on communication. [LINK]

As an artist and photographer, Farhad Bahram is interested in challenges: What does it mean to be from a particular place, from a particular background? What do labels mean, and what happens if we ignore them, or tear them down? What does it mean to be a performer, and a member of an audience or an observer? What if the line between them is blurred? [LINK]

...I centered the main trajectory of my work on examining the possibilities for transforming this determined correlation between medium and message into an ever-moving chain of relations with no fixed entities to hold onto. This effort introduces the communicative act as a subjective mechanism related to the inability of the addresser to fully express her intentions, but at the same time, her ability to enunciate a context for spontaneous realization. [LINK]

He tweets in French, English, and Farsi. He’ll set up an empty chair in front of his own chair on a busy sidewalk just to see who stops by, documenting the results in photographs. His portfolio includes photographs of shopkeepers holding portraits of dead relatives; photo assemblages “created to raise suspicion”’; photographs gathered from dozens of artists and sold to benefit children with cancer, children in poverty, children in need of human rights protection. [LINK]

Born in Tehran, Farhad began his photography practice as a photojournalist in 2005 and had a unique experience in this field as it strengthened his belief in cultural activities on grassroots as basis for social practices and photography. [LINK]

Iranian photographer Fahrad Bahram has always been interested in observing the effects of governmental mistrust and tradition, whether it is in the form of his photographic work and scholarly research. [LINK]

Farhad Bahram’s piece, Reciprocal Subject (2012) complicates the view of its subjects... Bahram empowers the subjects and makes them anonymous, but they share in the creation of the work. Bahram and each subject simultaneously took pictures of each other in open public spaces, and Bahram arranged the resulting color photos on a board in an apparent order or system that mimics a scrapbook, with names appearing beside each photo. [LINK]

As a citizen of Middle East, I have been able to observe the effects of governmental mistrust of traditions, which in Iran result in the attempt to control every aspect of communication. Having grown up under such stringent regulatory control, I developed a great desire to use the potential of Art in reconstructing the conservative type of communication in the society. [LINK]

CV

Portfolio

Looking Glass

Project Statement

This project is the outcome of several conversations with 15 Iranian individuals, living in the United States, whose identities are often assumed by others to only comprise their nationality. In this installation we tried to portray their complexity, depth and presence by asking them to share in a series of words and images that more accurately reflects their identity.

Mirroring the rich, interdependent, and shape-shifting world we live in, our sense of self is increasing in complexity and changing throughout our lifetime. This fluid self consists of many intersecting factors such as gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, age, mental and physical differences. By ignoring this diversity, each of us are too easily reduced to a label of ‘threat’, ‘resource’ or ‘irrelevant’. This inaccurate labeling darkens the glass we see others through and ourselves in.

This work was a collaboration between Farhad Bahram and Tom Lundberg.

Intersecting Bodies

Project Statement

A collaboration between artist Farhad Bahram and dancer Shannon Mockli that uses representation and movement to explore the relationship between the inside and outside, filtered by interrelated qualities that shape up our identity such as language, gender, race, history and politics. Bahram’s glass container places him as a discrete observer of the inside and also as an object of outside gaze. This collaborative experience portrays Bahram’s body wrapped in cultural text, while he interprets his own experience into movement through his body.

As a movement relationship develops between Farhad and Shannon, the work explores the potential of movement as communication. The two begin with becoming aware, of witnessing each other. The container speaks to an essential truth that as individuals, our understanding of this world and others is limited to our own unique physical existence—to all we have within our skin.

The evolving duet occurs in sections, the first built around recognition and using mirroring as a way to attend to one another, to work together on creating the same image. Their effort to create a singular image then evolves toward moving as a conversation, seeing and responding to what each other is doing, particularly using space as an inspiration—tracing each other’s body contour and filling up the negative space created by each body shape.

A string is then offered as a conduit for connection, literally connecting their body movements through the barrier of the container. This involves a high degree of negotiation to find a way of moving that supports connection and the individuality of each of them. It is the negotiation involved in the experience that becomes the metaphor for the kind of effort and sensitivity that understanding another requires.

The ritual of circling is conjured as this piece moves in a progressive fashion around the container, potentially speaking to the sacredness of each individual residing within one’s own container of experience and the sacredness of coming to know another as close as possible to press up against that container in search of understanding and expanding empathy.

This work was performed at Studio Without Walls, a public art event organized by ArtCity.

(Photo documentation: Pam Cressall, Bahador Yeganeh)

The Suicidal Sisyphus

Project Statement

In the flows of current globalized climate, in which cultural signs are floating aimlessly without being anchored by any history or reality, investigating one’s identity by returning to its cultural roots seems no longer possible. All that is left is the assignment of our own identity in relation to the leftovers of culture and our lived experience. Considering this condition, the determination of the self has obsessively become the center piece in my recent works. Here I am hoping to explore my identity through an absurd cycle of negation, without forcing myself into a particular pattern of morality or nature. This exploration entails various cultural objects and signs that are both irreplaceable and provisional. They are supposed to exhaust the eternal recurrence of the self, and the identity that is staggering between the presence and absence.

The text that is written on the foot reads as follows:
This is an absurd cycle, without forcing itself into particular patterns of morality or nature. It is so far from my intention to portray any equivalence or resemblance. Whatever you see meant to be considered only as a starting-point. There is something provisional in my commentary that is irreplaceable. No one can judge the position it entails, as here one would find merely the description of an intellectual malady. No natural, moral or metaphysical law is involved. Here I am exhausting the limits of the possible.

The texts written on the leaves are a selection of the readings that inspired me to work on this project.

(Photo documentation: Tom Lundberg, Bahador Yeganeh)

«A»

Project Description

This was my MFA thesis installation which appears as an unsettling and anomic 8’x4’x10’ (LWH) space within the gallery that is constructed of two distinct bodies of work. “The Representation” consists of a corner fully covered with a large 8’ x 14’ digital print which appears as a sort of wallpaper. There is also a book with plain black cover placed on barely visible transparent shelf attached to the false wall. The title of the book, “The Severed Head”, is inlaid on the book’s spine. The printed contents of the book has been concealed with thin red masking tape, leaving only the word “head” exposed through out the whole book. In other words, the original content of the book is not accessible to the reader and the only textual elements that one could read inside this book would be 153 words, all of which are “head”. The book “The Severed Head”, written by Julia Kristeva, investigates the idea of human body as an integrated medium, which comprises the consciousness and the identity of the self.

The other piece, “The Interpretation”, includes 152 bricks that accompany a book titled “Against Interpretation”. All of the inside pages of the book have been glued together one-by-one, so the book could not be opened and therefore there is no access to the content of it. The bricks have been positioned in a grid which creates a 4’x10’ flooring surface within the installation space. There is delicate and consistent handwritten text covering the outer surface of each brick, it is the Farsi translation of the book “Against Interpretation”. Most of the bricks are broken into pieces and while still in position, there are random cracks all over the grid of bricks.

A somewhat similar destructive process has been applied to the surface of the wall-mounted print from the previous body of work. There are linear, randomly-shaped white marks on the print, which are in fact the mid-layer of the paper that have been exposed after a removal process as it is apparent that red tape once covered the surface. There is also an orbicular area on the print that contains an image of a life-size naked body, lying prostrate and curled up like a fetus in womb. Except, this orbicular area, with the body contained it within, was not covered by the tape.

This work appears as an obscure lexicon, consisting of several indexes referring to destruction and subtraction. Each piece in this installation negates the presentation of itself as a pre-defined medium. There are texts that are impotent in conveying their intended message; diminished books that are incapable of structuring a common narrative; destructed prints that are depleted from the iconic value of an image; and bodies that are unable to introduce the real identity of individuals. Inside this destructive space lies an important and affirmative sentiment, which is the main objective in this work: the possibility of relocating the meaning from both within the text, and from the intentionality of the author to the contingencies of the reception and spontaneity of interaction.

War of Ignorance (2015)

Project Statement

“War of Ignorance” is a series of appropriated images from the mass media, which depicts the casualties of recent conflict in Gaza. Each frame represents a lost identity; an abstracted vision of the sacred self, an autopsy, in order to bring the invisible to visibility.

This work is an inquiry to further understand how the pattern of violence and ignorance of media could exhaust a self through the systematic destruction of identity. A self that becomes the other, ignored and excluded but still a part of humanity; face-less others who are living on the air since they have been dispossessed from all lands!

One Minute Engagement with an Iranian

Project Statement

“One Minute Engagement with an Iranian” is a representation of the self, based on social engagement that takes the whole of human relations and their social and cultural contexts as their theoretical and practical point of departure, rather than an independent experience of the self.

In this performance I began by presenting my body, as the carrier of my identity, within a green square, as I was inviting my viewers to re-figure my presence in that space by designing a one-minute pose for both themselves and for me.

Re-identification

Project Statement

In this public performance, artist confined himself in a pedestal, leaving his head out. He invited the viewers to have a role in shaping his identity symbolically by shaving his hair and facial hairs in any way they want.

"Re-identification" is about the struggle of capturing the invisible identity, or the subjective intimacy of the self, which is mixed up with loss and jouissance of fear, vulnerability of the body and also with the intimacy of the interaction between self and others.

(Photo documentation: Amir Farzad)

Artist is Absent

Project Statement

The idea of “Artist is Absent” is rooted in the critical engagement of the audience through exploring the identity of the artist as an outsider, who [may] exist(s) in a different social and cultural context. Here participants are asked to simply interact with the artist’s portrait while being challenged by the authenticity and vulnerability of the unknown artist.

In this project artist mailed hundreds of his portrait to random people asking them, in a letter, to tear his portrait apart and mail the pieces back to the artist. By destroying the [portrait of the] artist, participants are able to share part of their own identity through the trace of their cuts.

Live by Death

Project Statement

"Live by Death" is a series of portraits taken from shopkeepers on May 2012 in the old bazaar of Kashan, a city in central Iran located near the desert. In almost all of the shops there were images of family members –mostly fathers of the shopkeeper who has passed away. After learning about their deceased relatives, I asked the shopkeepers to hold the images in hand and pose in front of my camera.

Reciprocality

Project Statement

This public collaborative project, is an effort to establish a peripheral relationship between artist and audience. Going to the streets with two cameras, I asked random people to take a picture from me while I was photographing them at the same time. Through this interaction, that was purposefully negating the conventional means of communication, I tried to create an affirmative dialogue both with the location and people.

Teleography

Project Statement

Teleography is an ongoing collaborative project initiated in May 2012, wherein participants are invited to contribute photos (Teleographs), taken from their TV screen, to an online archive. This project seeks the possibility of a shift to an active viewer who confronts the media creatively!

You are Beautiful

Project Description

Working simultaneously in Tehran and San Francisco, They hit the streets with the “You Are Beautiful” message, aspiring to create moments of positive self-realization.
For two days in San Francisco, They took their hand-painted signs, which were written in Farsi, to Union Square, Market Street and the Golden Gate Bridge. They traveled by Bart and MUNI and spoke to anyone who approached them.

At the same time, which was night in Iran, Mahmoodreza was in Tehran. He was driving around with his light-up “taxi” sign “You Are Beautiful” in English. He settled at a coffee shop and photographed its willing occupants with the sign.

With our synchronous expeditions to promote good will, we spread an apolitical message. A message whose intention is a simple act of kindness. By doing this we aim to connect the people of these two diverse cultures, as well as have fun!
The final pictures and documentations of this project were exhibited in Mission Culture Center on 18 January 18th 2012, in San Francisco.

Alternative Context

Project Description

In this public performance the artist put two chairs in the street and sat on one of them while waiting for random people to respond by sitting on the vacant chair in front of him. During this unexpected interaction they discussed different topics such as culture, politic and random social issues. At the end artist asked them to draw something, whether about their interaction or the environment around, and then gathered their mappings.

Date with the Subject

Project Statement

This project was a public engagement practice based on various possible interconnections between two 'Subjects' and an 'Object' as a bond between them.

The initial step was reaching out to random people through social networks and asking them to meet the anonymous artist at a location of their choice in the city of Tehran. As part of the invitation, they were asked to bring an object of their choice to the meeting and give it to the artist; This invitation had been sent to a group of about 300 random people and from that number, 31 individuals accepted to participate in the project and meet the anonymous artist.

The representative invited subjects had no specification other than the anonymity of participants.